1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to instrumentation and methods for manipulating membrane potentials of living cells via electrical stimulation.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has long been known that the interior of animal and plant cells is electrically negative with respect to the exterior. The magnitude of this potential difference is generally between 5 and 90 mV, with most of the potential being developed across the cell membrane. The transmembrane potential of a given cell is set by the balance of the activities of ion transporters which create and maintain the electrochemical gradient, and the activities of ion channels, passive diffusion and other factors, that allow ions to flow through the plasma membrane.
Ion channels participate in, and regulate, cellular processes as diverse as the generation and timing of action potentials, energy production, synaptic transmission, secretion of hormones and the contraction of muscles, etc. Many drugs exert their specific effects via modulation of ion channels. Examples include antiepileptic compounds like phenytoin and lamotrigine, which block voltage-dependent sodium channels in the brain, antihypertensive drugs like nifedipine and diltiazem, which block voltage-dependent calcium channels in smooth muscle cells, and stimulators of insulin release like glibenclamide and tolbutamide, which block ATP-regulated potassium channels in the pancreas.
Finding new drugs which have specific modulatory effects on ion channels requires methods for measuring and manipulating the membrane potential of cells with the ion channels present in the membrane. A number of methods exist today that can be used to measure cell transmembrane potentials and to measure the activities of specific ion channels. Probably the best known approach is the patch clamp, originally developed by Neher, Sakmann, and Steinback. (The Extracellular Patch Clamp, A Method For Resolving Currents Through Individual Open Channels In Biological Membranes”, Pfluegers Arch. 375; 219-278, 1978). Other methods include optical recording of voltage-sensitive dyes (Cohen et al., Annual Reviews of Neuroscience 1: 171-82, 1978) and extracellular recording of fast events using metal (Thomas et al., Exp. Cell Res. 74: 61-66, 1972) or field effect transistors (FET) (Fromherz et al., Science 252: 1290-1293, 1991) electrodes.
The patch clamp technique allows measurement of ion flow through ion channel proteins and the analysis of the effect of drugs on ion channels function. In brief, in the standard patch clamp technique, a thin glass pipette is heated and pulled until it breaks, forming a very thin (<1 μm in diameter) opening at the tip. The pipette is filled with salt solution approximating the intracellular ionic composition of the cell. A metal electrode is inserted into the large end of the pipette, and connected to associated electronics. The tip of the patch pipette is pressed against the surface of the cell membrane. The pipette tip seals tightly to the cell and isolates a few ion channel proteins in a tiny patch of membrane. The activity of these channels can be measured electrically (single channel recording) or, alternatively, the patch can be ruptured allowing measurements of the combined channel activity of the entire cell membrane (whole cell recording).
During both single channel recording and whole-cell recording, the activity of individual channel subtypes can be further resolved by imposing a “voltage clamp” across the membrane. Through the use of a feedback loop, the “voltage clamp” imposes a user-specified potential difference across the membrane, allowing measurement of the voltage, ion, and time dependencies of various ion channel currents. These methods allow resolution of discrete ion channel subtypes.
A major limitation of the patch clamp technique as a general method in pharmacological screening is its low throughput. Typically, a single, highly trained operator can test fewer than ten compounds per day using the patch clamp technique. Furthermore the technique is not easily amenable to automation, and produces complex results that require extensive analysis by skilled electrophysiologists. By comparison, the use of optical detection systems provides for significantly greater throughput for screening applications (currently, up to 100,000 compounds per day), while at the same time providing for highly sensitive analysis of transmembrane potential. Methods for the optical sensing of membrane potential are typically based on translocation, redistribution, orientation changes, or shifts in spectra of fluorescent, luminescent, or absorption dyes in response to the cellular membrane potential (see generally González, et al., Drug Discovery Today 4:431-439, 1999).
A preferred optical method of analysis has been previously described (González and Tsien, Chemistry and Biology 4: 269-277, 1997; González and Tsien, Biophysical Journal 69: 1272-1280, 1995; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,661,035 issued Aug. 26, 1997, hereby incorporated by reference). This approach typically comprises two reagents that undergo energy transfer to provide a ratiometric fluorescent readout that is dependent upon the membrane potential. The ratiometric readout provides important advantages for drug screening including improved sensitivity, reliability and reduction of many types of experimental artifacts.
Compared to the use of a patch clamp, optical methods of analysis do not inherently provide the ability to regulate, or clamp, the transmembrane potential of a cell. Clamping methods are highly desirable because they provide for significantly enhanced, and more flexible methods of ion channel measurement. A need thus exists for reliable and specific methods of regulating the membrane potentials of living cells that are compatible with optical methods of analysis and are readily amendable to high throughput analysis.